Fitting 44% More Data on a C64/1541 Floppy Disk #VintageComputing #Floppy @pagetable

The physical data format on a Commodore 1541 5¼-inch floppy disk as used by the C64 is completely defined in software. The drive’s operating system fits 170 KB on a disk. A post on pagetable.com explores different strategies, each with its pros and cons, to fit up to 246 KB.

Regular 1541 Disk Format

These are the specifications of the original 5¼-inch “minifloppy” from 1976:

  • 35 tracks
  • radius of outermost track: 57.150 mm
  • track spacing: 1/48 inch (i.e. 48 tpi, tracks-per-inch)
  • track capacity: 50 Kbit/track1 (= 25.4 bytes per millimeter on track 35)

See more in the post here.

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Filed under: floppy, vintage computing —
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